


the war outside our door keeps raging on

by novelized



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelized/pseuds/novelized
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They give him a rope to keep him grounded in reality, and it works, the way that most distractions do. He ties knots instead of thinking. He ties knots instead of sleeping. And then Gale Hawthorne comes along.</p><p>(set during Mockingjay Part 1.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the war outside our door keeps raging on

They give him a rope to keep him grounded in reality, and it works, the way that most distractions do. He ties knots instead of thinking. He ties knots instead of sleeping.

It’s not easy to say what’s worse. His eyes close only in short, fitful bursts. She plagues his nightmares. She’s there when he’s awake, too, though, just out of reach. He can’t save her. He can’t do anything but work the rope around his fingers. (He remembers her screams more vividly than her laughter. He can’t conjure an image of her face unless there are sharptoothed muttations tearing the flesh away from her skin.)

The rope works on the most basic level. It keeps him alive, somehow. But it doesn’t keep him living.

He needs something more complicated than a knot.

*

Gale seeks him out after midnight. Finnick’s not surprised; he knew, eventually, he would.

They are such different people. Here, in Thirteen, they have everything in common.

“Hello,” Finnick says. His voice is flatter than it used to be. Like an empty shell of his old self. Caesar Flickerman had once called him _dynamic._ That feels like a thousand years ago.

He doesn’t ask why Gale’s not sleeping, why he’d left his compartment. He just twists a thick rope around his hands, again and again and again and again. Gale leans against the wall and watches him, like he’s mildly interested. Finnick can’t imagine anything more boring.

“You can ask,” Finnick tells him without looking up. “I’ll answer you honestly.”

There’s silence between them. Finnick wonders if he’s caught him off-guard. Wonders if he’s planning out his words like maybe he savors them. Like he’s too conscious about saying the wrong thing. Aren’t they all, now?

“You and Katniss,” Gale says, at last, and Finnick lets out a quiet and humorless laugh.

He’d promised he’d answer, but what he says instead is, “Are you worried?”

“I started worrying two years ago,” Gale tells him, each word slow and measured. “I haven’t been able to stop.”

Finnick nods. He ties a sheepshank knot, admires it for a second, and then unties it. Starts on another one. “You don’t have to worry about me. There’s only one girl I’ve ever wanted.”

More silence.

“You’re not the one I was worried about,” Gale says finally, and when Finnick looks up from the rope, for the very first time, Gale is already gone.

*

Finnick thinks that’s the last of him, for awhile. This time he is surprised.

Gale approaches him during lunch, white-knuckled around his tray. Finnick observes him: he’s taller than he’d realized, broad-shouldered. His grey eyes look dark in this light. It reminds him of stormy days at sea.

For a second neither of them speak. Gale regards him cautiously, untrusting. “Don’t tell Katniss I came to your room last night,” he says, and it’s not phrased like a question, but Finnick knows what he's asking.

It hadn’t even crossed Finnick’s mind. He reaches for the rope in his pocket, doesn’t answer until he can feel the frayed ends between his fingers. “Sure,” he tells him, unblinkingly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

*

That night Gale comes again.

They don’t talk at all. Not once. Gale crouches against the wall and Finnick knots and unknots, ties and unties, and he offers Gale a spare length of rope that gets waved off. He’d rather sit in silence. So Finnick thinks maybe Gale has them too, the nightmares that don’t cease just because he’s awake. The vivid flashing images, the crippling fear. But he doesn’t know what could possibly be haunting him. The girl _he_ loves came back.

*

It becomes a routine, an unspoken one. It’s not stamped on their arms with the rest of their schedules, but either no one notices or no one cares. Gale appears at his door and Finnick lets him in. In Thirteen they’re just people, but Finnick knows he gets treated like he’s fragile. Broken. It’s not a debatable matter: he also knows, without a doubt, that he is.

Tonight he’s working on a Flemish eye knot. It’s one he’d used often, back in District Four. Now he can’t get his fingering right. He can almost feel himself start to drift away.

“Are you really prepared?” Gale says suddenly, voice low. It’s startling enough that he loses his grip on the rope, lets it slip out of his fingers. He slowly unwinds it. Starts back at the beginning.

“Prepared for what?” he asks. Sometimes, here, he forgets how to have a real conversation. The give-and-take. Like the gentle ebb and flow of the sea.

(In his dreams he talks to Annie. Even then she can’t respond.)

“To lose everything." Gale's voice is sharp. It’s not a new concept. He’s thought those same words before.

Finnick looks at him curiously. His face isn’t elegant or graceful, but ruggedly handsome, maybe. Earnest. There is strength and muscle in the curve of his spine. “You would’ve done well in the Games,” Finnick tells him, returning to his rope. “Especially with that mindset.”

It’s Gale’s turn to study him. “What mindset?”

“That you still have something left to lose.”

*

Eventually Gale takes some rope. He doesn’t do anything with it, though. He just curls it around his fists like he’s trying to see how much resistance it can take.

*

This is their game:

Gale sits up against the wall with his feet spread out before him, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. Finnick doesn’t even like to blink for too long. He sits cross-legged on the floor. He makes knots.

“I miss the ocean,” Finnick will say. “Morning swims at dawn. Warm saltwater. The way your body feels when it dries in the sun. Falling asleep in the sand.” He can remember it, if he tries. The scorching heat of a summer day. Laughing.

“I miss hunting,” Gale will answer. “Really hunting. Disappearing into the land.”

It’s imprudent to talk like this. Of the past. Of things they no longer have. That’s probably why they do it, and only under the veil of nighttime. In the tiny compartment. Their new home.

“With Katniss?” Finnick says, questioning.

Gale doesn’t open his eyes. “I hunted before I knew her.”

“But in your memories of hunting…”

Finnick likes that Gale thinks before speaking. He can see it in the way his brow furrows, considering. He’s seen the other sides of Gale, too, but only in little glimpses. The flash of anger in his eyes. The way his jaw clenches when someone’s talking to him, indignant, righteously resentful. He thinks he likes this Gale better.

Here, at night, they talk about everything except the rebellion. It’s the only time they can.

“Yeah,” Gale admits quietly. “She’s there.”

Finnick feels a familiar tug in his stomach; he knows that feeling. He didn’t say that Annie was there with him, in the ocean, in the beach, in the hot summer sun, but she was. She’s always there. Even when she isn’t. “And she knows you’re in love with her?”

“She knows. But she doesn’t love me,” Gale says. He squeezes the rope between his fingers. “Not fully.”

Finnick stares past him, unseeing. Slipping away again. “Well,” he says. “Maybe it’d be worse if she did.”

*

“I miss the color green,” Gale says. He plucks at his shirt in disdain. It’s grey. But a shallow grey. Not the deep grey of his eyes. “Green anything.”

“I miss seafood,” Finnick answers. Just the word is enough to make his mouth water. “Fish and lobster and oysters, man, the oysters.”

Gale shifts, pulls his knees in. “I miss privacy. I miss being able to…” He lets his sentence trail off. His nose scrunches up a little; Finnick doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. It’s fascinating.

“Being able to what?” he prompts, and Gale looks at him. He doesn’t _think_ he’s blushing, but then, Gale’s never been stripped down and paraded in front of an audience. If his virtue is gone it’s because he gave it away willingly. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have it taken from him.

And then Finnick gets it. His lips twitch into a smile—the first real one in so long. Too long. Gale focuses his attention back on the rope in his hand, staring at it fixedly, determinedly. Like he hadn’t seen it.

“You’re sexually frustrated,” Finnick says, amused.

Gale doesn’t look up. “Can you blame me?”

“There are solutions to that, you know.”

“I’m aware.”

Finnick looks at Gale, really looks at him, for seconds, moments, somehow forgetting about the knots. He feels a thrum of life in his chest. Miniscule, but there. Still Gale doesn’t look up.

“I don’t miss the mines,” Gale says. Quieter. “I’ll be happy if I never have to go back.”

The thrum is gone. Finnick goes back to his knot.

*

Days are nights and nights are days. When there’s light he walks around aimlessly, around people and through people. He sees her face everywhere. Places she doesn’t belong, on bodies that aren’t hers.

Weirdly enough, though, he starts to see him too. In the muscular shoulders of a soldier. In the widening eyes of a boy from The Seam.

He thinks he only exists in the day of night.

*

This time Finnick finds Gale.

The door opens; Gale’s surprise registers openly, unashamedly. It’s earlier than they’re used to. Finnick didn’t bring his rope.

“What are you doing?” Gale asks.

Finnick pushes him backwards. Inside. The shove is sudden enough that Gale isn’t expecting it, stumbles a step before righting himself. Finnick looks at him. He’d made his decision—unconsciously, maybe. But he’d made it. “I’m solving your problem,” he says, and his hands fist up in Gale’s grey shirt.

He sees it, then, the flash of anger in his eyes. He is swift, the way his hands immediately jump to action and wrap tightly around Finnick’s wrists, tight enough to hurt, tight enough that he could probably break something if he wanted to. Finnick is strong and Finnick is wicked with a trident but he’s no match for Gale’s brute strength. Gale’s thumbs dig into his pulse points. Finnick can feel his own heartbeat. It’s the first time he’s felt it in months.

“What are you _doing?_ ” Gale repeats, and his voice is lower, grittier.

“Giving you what you want,” Finnick says, and he presses forward and kisses him roughly.

Gale’s still holding his wrists but he doesn’t stop him, doesn’t turn his head. Finnick, it seems, is full of surprises. For a second Gale doesn’t react, doesn’t move, barely breathes. He blinks and the anger is gone, replaced by something primal, almost, something darker. He shoves Finnick against the wall, pins his arms up over his head, and kisses him back.

For a few moments it’s push-and-shove, a fight for control, tongue and teeth, but then they fall into a sort of groove. It’s nothing like any of the kissing he’s done before. With Annie he was always sweet, gentle, slow and tender. When it was a kiss that had been purchased, stolen from him, he was submissive and compliant. This, though. This is completely different. Finnick’s aware of his nerves, his cells, every inch of his body. Electricity sparks through his veins. He’s _alive._

Eventually Gale lets go of his wrists and they’re sore, stiff, the indents of Gale’s fingers pressed into his skin. It doesn’t matter. He kisses him again and lets his hands slip under Gale’s shirt, touches warm skin. Gale makes a soft noise against his mouth. Together they move towards the bed.

“Thought there was only one person you ever wanted,” Gale murmurs, pulling his shirt up and over his shoulders, letting it drop carelessly to the ground.

“I said there was only one girl,” Finnick answers, and there’s a little bit of a bite to his voice. He sheds his own shirt too, makes quick work of it, lets himself be pushed back against the thin mattress. Climbs back and settles into the cockiness he’d once thought he’d lost. Tilts his head up at Gale, twists his mouth into a smirk. “You’re not a girl, are you?”

As if providing proof, Gale climbs over top of him. Presses flush against him. There’s a look in his eyes and Finnick knows, _knows_ , that this is new to him. But not Finnick. He’d been held by rougher hands before.

Finnick watches Gale’s face when he slides his hand down his pants, wraps his fingers around him, watches those dark eyes darken. He is beautiful like this. Innocent, almost. Trusting. Like Finnick never could be.

“You can,” Finnick tells him. Gives him permission for something he’d never actually ask for. “If you want to.”

It takes a moment, but Gale nods, licks his lips sort of hungrily, pushes at Finnick’s pants. He kicks them off and aside and Gale gets him on his knees, and he’s surprisingly gentle with it. Finnick has been in this position more times than he can count. But he’s never wanted it. Never asked for it.

Gale groans when he pushes in, and Finnick white-knuckles the ragged edges of the mattress, listening to him breathe. He’s surprised by how human he sounds. Needy and desperate and _human._ His own breaths are pulled out of him in waves, and Gale’s hand reaches around and touches him, rough callused fingers, letting him feel it too. There’s the biggest difference: they finish together, shaky, biting back words they’d never actually say. The biggest difference is that he finishes at all.

Afterwards, they collapse on the mattress, hot and sweating, gulping for fresh air, and Gale clears his throat and says in an unsteady voice, “I don’t—” but he doesn’t finish the thought and Finnick doesn’t ask him to. It doesn’t matter. They don’t have to say anything. They don’t owe each other anything.

Finnick eventually leaves.

It’s all he knows how to do.

*

That night Finnick gets an hour straight of uninterrupted sleep. No nightmares. No screaming. He wakes up dry-faced and remembers. He feels it when he moves too quickly. A welcomed sort of ache.

He ties a knot. But just one.

*

Gale’s already undressing when he says, “Don’t tell Katniss about this.”

It hadn’t crossed Finnick’s mind.

He doesn’t think it’d matter if it had.

*

This is their new game:

Gale seeks Finnick out, or Finnick seeks Gale out. They both seek out an empty room. Silence. As much privacy as they can get.

They exchange messy handjobs. They kiss hard enough to bruise. They leave deep purples and dark blues and red fingernail scratches, but never hard or deep enough to scar. Finnick’s never asked about the lash marks on his back. Gale’s never volunteered the information.

Sometimes they don’t kiss. Sometimes they sit and talk. Never about the rebellion. Never about Annie. Never about Katniss.

Finnick starts to feel like he’s living. He hears gasps and groans more often than he hears screams. It’s not ideal, but it’s something.

*

They’re together the night before the bombs come. Something inside of Finnick is exploding, too.

*

Eventually, he puts the rope away.

He doesn’t need to tie another knot.


End file.
